Natural Consequences can be hard to apply!
It can be difficult as parents to let our kids experience the consequences of their actions. I had a perfect opportunity to do just that this morning and I didn’t take it. My son was going to be late for a class (too much screen time) and instead of letting him be late I took him there but was angry with him (and me) for not taking responsibility to get himself there timely. I could have let him walk in late and experience the teacher’s disappointment (a perfect natural consequence) but I didn’t.
And the whole ride home I asked myself: “why not”?
After all, I am a therapist, I support people to do this very thing in their own lives, I KNEW what to do… but there I found myself driving him to class and then kicking myself for it. I was balancing my need to teach him responsibility with my need for him to get the most out of an expensive class, but neither was being addressed.
So today the lesson I needed to learn was twofold: 1) We all make mistakes… there will be other opportunities for me to practice what I preach (so to speak) and let him learn through natural consequences and 2) No need to beat myself up for the mistake, just keep it in mind for next time!
So remember…Learning to tolerate the negative feelings (your own and those of the people you love) takes steady practice. And when we practice sometime we err. And that is ok!
